Site Mobile Navigation

M&M’s to Unveil New Speaking Role at Super Bowl

A POPULAR candy will offer elocution lessons of a sort on Super Bowl Sunday, answering the question “How now, brown?”

M&M’s, sold by the confectionery giant Mars, will use a commercial during Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 to introduce a character to represent brown M&M’s named Ms. Brown. She will be the sixth computer-animated mascot for the brand, following walking and talking versions of the red, yellow, blue, green and orange M&M’s.

Ms. Brown is the second female in the M&M’s cast, after Ms. Green, and like her colorful counterparts she will be imbued with a distinct personality. Ms. Brown is an intelligent woman with a sharp wit who finally decided to reveal herself after working for decades behind the scenes as “chief chocolate officer.”

The commercial, scheduled to run in the first quarter of the NBC broadcast of the game, is being produced by the M&M’s creative agency of record, BBDO New York, part of the BBDO North America unit of BBDO Worldwide, which is owned by the Omnicom Group.

BBDO New York has created several spots about the M&M’s characters that ran in previous Super Bowls, dating to 2000; the most recent was in Super Bowl XLIII in 2009. For the last two Super Bowls, BBDO New York created commercials for another Mars candy, Snickers, that featured human celebrities like Betty White and Roseanne Barr.

Mars is an example of a marketer that has been a mainstay of Super Bowls, regardless of which networks broadcast the games or which teams play. Other stalwart sponsors, which are also buying commercial time in Super Bowl XLVI, include the Anheuser-Busch division of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bridgestone, CareerBuilder, Cars.com, Coca-Cola, General Motors, GoDaddy.com, Hyundai, PepsiCo, Toyota and Volkswagen of America.

Photo

A print ad anticipating the arrival of Ms. Brown for a Super Bowl commercial for M&M's candy.

Their devotion to the Super Bowl comes at no small cost. NBC is charging an average of $3.5 million for each 30 seconds of commercial time in the game, compared with an average of $3 million for each 30-second spot in Super Bowl XLV on Fox in February 2011. Even at that price, commercial time for Super Bowl XLVI has been sold out since Thanksgiving, NBC recently disclosed.



Still, the high price — and the additional scrutiny to which Super Bowl spots are subjected — can make a sponsorship as much of a gamble as betting $10,000 on Labor Day that your favorite football team will win the next Super Bowl. Indeed, some companies that often advertise in Super Bowls will be sitting this one out, including FedEx, which also uses BBDO New York as its creative agency.

“For those of us in c.p.g. marketing, it is the big game,” said Debra Sandler, chief consumer officer for the Mars Chocolate North America division of Mars in Hackettstown, N.J., using shorthand for consumer packaged goods.

Although it can carry big risks, it is sensible this time because it offers “the perfect opportunity to launch the biggest news for M&M’s in years,” she added.

(Yes, Ms. Sandler is already hearing jokes about the similarities between her title and Ms. Brown’s. “I actually like her title better than mine,” Ms. Sandler said, laughing, because “she’s above my pay grade.”)

One way to ensure that a Super Bowl commercial is “not a splash, a flash in the pan,” Ms. Sandler said, is to make it the centerpiece of an elaborate campaign that takes place before, during and after the game. In fact, the spot will serve to “kick off a year of activity” to introduce Ms. Brown, she added.

In a teaser effort that begins this week, Ms. Brown will arrive in social media, taking over the M&M’s fan page on Facebook, at facebook.com/mms, and sending messages on Twitter, where the character will have her own account with the handle @mmsbrown.

Photo

For now only Ms. Brown's silhouette is being shown.

There will also be print, online and mobile ads as well as a deal to incorporate Ms. Brown into the radio program “Elvis Duran and the Morning Show,” syndicated by the Premiere Networks unit of Clear Channel Communications. Other elements include events in Los Angeles and New York, displays in stores, radio commercials and appearances for Ms. Brown during episodes of the new season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” on NBC, which begins on Feb. 12.

There will be “a lot of ways to touch the brand,” said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO North America.

The Super Bowl is “such a great place to introduce” the character, he said, because “the Super Bowl is fun, and M&M’s is fun.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Also, M&M’s is a mass-market product and the Super Bowl draws a “mass, everyone” audience, he added. Last year, an average of 111 million people watched the game, setting a record for the largest single audience for an American TV show.



Mr. Lubars said he was unsure why the brown M&M’s was “the only one that didn’t have a character yet.”

“It’s a nice way to refresh the brand,” he added, and at the same time “remind consumers it’s the same M&M’s you love.”

Ms. Sandler identified a catalyst for the arrival of Ms. Brown. In a campaign in 2010 in which consumers could vote for their favorite character, she said, many “told us, ‘I want to vote for brown; why can’t I vote for brown?’ ” (The winner was Ms. Green.)

Mars Chocolate North America spent $84.3 million in the first nine months of 2011 to advertise M&M’s, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP. That was a substantial increase from the $64.1 million spent in the same period of 2010 and almost equal to the $87.8 million spent in all of 2010.

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2012, on Page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: M&M’s to Unveil New Speaking Role at Super Bowl. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe